Rise of the Spirits
Before The 11 Spirits, the planetwas a self sufficient world, in which the Trees recycled energy in order to maintain balance of the eight Elements that threaded together to make the rules of physics. These trees were kept alive by a Seed that was lit by dragonfire and guarded by a Guardian for safety. These trees supplied the world with energy and magic, allowing the use of Spells. The trees also influenced Internal Elements that people were born with, allowing them to freely manipulate an element with enough training. Then three humans found and collected all the pieces of the Titan Armor, and with it, changed reality and the laws of physics entirely. One of those men became The Priest and over time created an entire new set of physics for the world that rendered the Trees nonexistant. The other two men became the leaders of The 11 Spirits and The 11 Phantoms. At first, The Priest promised his companions, Shiroko and Kuroko greatness, for they were overlooked in favor of The Great Ones. He stated that as long as the Three Gods Religion continued to thrive, it would be impossible for them to become reknowned for their greatness. They were eager to help out due to their distaste of thr Three Gods Religion. At the time, The Priest was unaware of the true powers behind the Titan Armor and merely saw it as a means of obtaining superpowers. It wasn't until he returned with Shiroko and Kuroko to The Kingdom, that he did start preaching of a new religion. At first, The Priest was ridiculed for his blasphemy and ignored, but everytime he told a new story, it became true and physics changed little by little. Even when the villagers didn't believe him, the effects of his stories changed details about the world. The first tale he told was about how Shiroko and Kuroko created the universes, not Nami, Dori, and Kaname. Being that The Priest knew of the Astra World, he included it in his ideals for how the world actualy worked. He insisted that Shiroko, the Spirit of Holy Energy created the universe that human inhabit, and that Kuroko, the Phantom of Unholy Energy created the Astra Universe, where he ruled over a legion of demons that tortured the wicked for all eternity when they died. Even as most people he told it too wrote it off as complete nonsense, the Titan Armor activated and transformed into Shiroko and Kuroko into the beings they were told they were. Kuroko was sent to the Astra Universe away from all humanity, and from his best friend to live among monsters and evil doers while Shiroko got to exist as the Spirit everyone looked up to. Years passed as The Priest continued to tell his stories to villagers of The Kingdom. At this time, his religious ideals formed a small cult that inhabited the Light Temple, which was abandoned when the idea of the Three Gods Religion replaced the Single God Religion. It was then called the Temple of Shiroko and used as the main area of preaching. Without proof of The Priests word, people began to suspect the falsehood of his tales and questioned the ways of physics if Shiroko and Kuroko were in fact the makers of everything. This is when The 11 Spirits were formed. The Priest insisted that all the elements and magic of the world are all thanks to Spirits that govern over each element. This would replace the idea of Trees doing so, and thus the original Trees were wiped out from existance. The Priest also insisted that these Spirits were each elected by Shiroko himself to take on the rolls as the guardians of the elements. One of his most famous tales was how Shiroko chose Ten animals from around the world to make them the elemental Spirits. A lion was chosen as the Spirit of Fire, a frog was chosen as the Spirit of Water, a bear was chosen as the Spirit of Earth, a bird was chosen as the Spirit of Wind, a rhino was chosen as the Spirit of Space, a monkey was chosen as the Spirit of Time, a lightning bug was chosen as the Spirit of Light and a spider was chosen as the Spirit of Dark. Then, as the land and cosmos were two different planes, the Spirits were divided to each territory, and two more were chosen to manage over the four of each. A dinosaur was selected to watch over the Spirits of water, earth, wind, and fire as the Spirit of Land, while a raven was brought in to watch over the Spirits of space, time, dark and light as the Spirit of Cosmos. As The Priest told this story, it became a reality, and henceforth all the elements in the universe were the result of The Spirits, and not The Trees. A hundred more years passed and The Priest continued to live on in eternal youth thanks to the Titan Armor, and continued to preach his ideals. Eventually, Central City, the capital of The Kingdom grew to accept The Priest's religion as their main belief, while only outsiders in small villages still mainly believed in the Three Gods Religion, as well as explorers who had previously left and populated other continents before the ideals of The Priest became accepted. He suggested that people pray at the Temple of Shiroko for things, and that the Spirits will make them come true if they aren't sinners. As people came and prayed to the Spirits, they found that their farms, businesses and wellbeing flourished while non-prayers didn't. This inspired others to build shrines for the Spirits everywhere, so that those who were not able to make it to the Temple of Shiroko would be able to pray to the Spirits. As more shrines were build around The Kingdom and Kanamerica, many found that they experienced great gifts from the Spirits, but as the religion spread further and further, the less likely it became that one might receive a blessing from the Spirits. Many would return to the Temple of Shiroko to hear more about the Spirits from The Priest, and later he'd explain that the Spirits do indeed live within our world, but exist in a spiritual plane invisible to human senses. He also insisted that their home continent is actually Eliasdesnoir, where their domain lies. In order to keep explorers away though and to cover up his false stories, The Priest claimed that Eliasdesnoir was not safe for humans because that's where most of the mythological creatures on The Planet come from. As The Priest spoke this, it became true, but most of The Priest's tellings went unnoticed by him for many things he talked about happened far away, or beyond the physical realm. In a sense he was aware he was changing things, but was not fully aware that EVERYTHING he was saying was actually becoming true. He himself still believed the idea of the Spirits was a false idea that didn't really exist, and that all the successes from the altars were mere coincidences. For another hundred years, the world lived under The Spirits and civilizations flourished. Many people highly respected The Priest for his teachings, but began to believe in his religion a little too firmly. They began to question The Priest any time he told a story with slightly new ideals, challenging his word against the power of the Spirits that actually provded for them. Because of this, The Priest felt threatened that his importance would no longer be relavent, and he got much darker, mentioning more the terrors of the Astra Universe than the great things of the Spirits. By now, the idea of Spirits was widely accepted in all of The Kingdom, Kanamerica, and Fujian, and in many areas of Dorian and Namiden, but as nations became more power hungry, the goodness of the Spirits became less effective. The wrath of the Phantoms was introduced a couple hundred years after the generocity of the Spirits. Those who were unfaithful to the laws would be plagued and taken away by the Phantoms, instead of just being overlooked by the Spirits. This brought a great sense of fear from the civilians, and as The Priest spoke it, it became true. Phantoms from the Astra Universe would appear, riding large dark dragons called Serpents, and would terrorize the nonbelievers and wrongdoers, sometimes even taking them back to the Astra World with them for eternal damnation. People then began to beg the Phantoms for mercy and erected new altars just for them, where they would sacrifice animals to keep the Phantoms from bestowing their wrath upon them. The fear of the Phantoms quickly shifted the followers away from praising the Spirits to appeasing the Phantoms. As the knowledge and fear of the Phantoms spread outward from The Kingdom, the altars of the Spirits were abandoned and left untouched for a hundred years. When The Priest was asked where the Phantoms come from, he insisted that they were chosen by Kuroko to watch over eight sectors of the Astra Universe, where they led armies of demons and monsters to torture the sinful souls. Each sector represented a different method of torture, each being assisted by the element that each Phantom represented. He also insisted that the Phantoms were never satisfied and were always hungry for fresh souls to torture. They purposely come into the Chi Universe and invoke plagues on the wicked so that they might be driven to death and end up in their own sector for torturing. The only thing that keeps the Phantoms from attacking the faithful is Kuroko, the ruler of the Astra World. While Phantoms are evil to the core, Kuroko does believe in law and order and refuses to bring the good into his universe. While this is true, the Phantoms are incredibly unfaithful to their ruler and at any given chance will bestow their wrath on anybody unleashed appeased with a sacrifice of their liking. As the Phantoms grew in popularity and were prayed to more, the Spirits were prayed to less. The Priest once suggested that it is the prayers one does at an altar that fuels the energy of a Spirit, and since only a few were still praying to the Spirits in gratitude, the Spirits had lost their power greatly, and the Phantoms became incredibly powerful. Because of this, the Phantoms traveled into the Chi Universe and captured each elemental spirit, trapping them within a Temple created by the stories of The Priest. Shiroko told the Spirits of Land and Cosmos that in their weakened state, as Spirits they would be powerless to stop the madness of the Phantoms, so they had to inhabit human bodies to set out and set things right. Unknowing to The Priest, the Spirit of Land inhabited Terran and Cosmos inhabited the body of Pluto. Together, they faced the world, accomplishing legendary feats while rescuing all of the Spirits, defeating the Phantoms and eventually The Priest himself. Once The Priest had his Titan Armor disabled, he fell to ashes, and the Titan Armor was returned to an earlier point in time where Shiroko and Kuroko assumed Nami and Dori would obtain it. Unfortunately, they didn't send it quite far back enough and instead it ended up in the possession of Rhyden, who used it to go even further back and face Dori, where he was defeated, and the Titan Armor was finally returned to the beyond. In the present time though, reality continued to live on under the rule of the Spirits, although they weren't nearly as religiously favored as before, it was enough to keep the world stable until reality was changed again into the Era of the Elixir Emerald.